Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez

I wrote a guest blog post about my late-token system for homework assignments , where students can spend tokens to submit assignments late without a grade penalty. Each token is worth one day, and students must fill out a form to use tokens. I also use their token usage to identify students who may need more check-ins. [ Also posted on Medium. ] I originally wrote about this system on this blog in 2022 . The guest post describes what I do now in 2026, while this post focuses on how you can implement a late-token system yourself. I recommend the following steps: Decide on a simple set of rules to make it easy to know who should receive a message. Create a form that auto-captures student email addresses. Figure out how you will message students. Figure out how students will know how many tokens they have left. For deciding the rules , my current system is relatively simple. 1 token = 1 day. Students get 7 days, unless I say otherwise. I also give students a 30-minute grace period, but th...

When I became an associate professor of the practice, I said yes to almost everything because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. That led to an unsustainable workload that I wrote about here . [ Also posted on Medium. ] In this post, I share a framework I’m developing to help me decide whether to say “yes” to a service request, with the goal of thinking more strategically rather than reactively. I’m writing this for anyone who feels like they are spending too much time on service or feeling overwhelmed by it all. I’m also writing it for current and future me as I navigate these requests. Understand why you have too much service Before using a strategy to better handle service requests, we must know thyself! Use the Five Whys to dig deeper In some ways, the answer to this question seems obvious, because you keep saying “yes.” But we need to dig deeper by using the Five Whys from design thinking. The Five Whys is an iterative process for exploring the causes and effects...

My LLM brainstorming student activity was accepted to SIGCSE TS 2026 's Special Session ACM Generative AI Task Force Special Session: Teaching with Generative AI: Tools You Can Use Today . This special session asked the SIGCSE community to apply to present how they use generative AI (GenAI) in their teaching. Those accepted would then present what they do during the session. [ Also posted on Medium. ] This blog post is a companion piece to my presentation, so that people have more to reference than just my slides . It also includes all the nitty-gritty details people can use and copy-paste. Context But first context, because context matters! This is for my CompSci 216: Everything Data (here is the link to the Spring 2026 offering ; later links will also point to this semester's instance). It is a post-CS2 elective data science course with an average of 111 students over the last five semesters (Spring 2024 to Spring 2026). We are on the 15-week semester system, and it has a 4-...

TLDR: This post is a behind-the-scenes look at a task tracker I’ve developed over years of managing teaching teams (from 3 to 36 teaching assistants). I share examples of the task lists we use each semester, plus templates for modules, exams, and weekly tasks. You’ll also get insight into how I design the tracker to streamline work and support my team. [ Also posted on Medium. ] I’ve written two blog posts about how I track tasks: my to-do lists and my teaching team’s to-do lists . But both are kind of abstract. I write about the things that go into them, but no concrete details. And I did this because I didn’t want to presume others’ contexts. However, that abstractness never fully sat well with me because, when it comes to learning, sometimes concrete examples or case studies are essential. So, this blog post introduces an example course teaching staff task tracker in a Trello board . Screenshot of some of the lists in the Trello board. This post is an experiment to see if peopl...

 While going through my mid-semester survey this semester, I discovered an expert blind spot in myself. One variation of an expert blind spot is where an expert forgets to convey information that is vital for a novice to understand something. In my case, my survey reminded me how important it is to help students connect the dots by explaining why we are doing certain things in class. And one way to do that is by going over the class plan for the day. [ Also posted on Medium. ] So, I thought I’d write this post to remind you all of this little teaching practice. Perhaps you already do this, so here’s a reminder of why. Or, perhaps, you do not, and this is your invitation to try it since it does not take that much time to implement. The Practice: Class Plan for the Day The practice is where you start class by summarizing the plan for that day in a single slide. I do this practice with a slide called “Plan for the week/day” in my large (N = 80–120 students) elective data science ...

If you follow this blog at all, you know how much I love thinking about productivity ( to-do list tracking , calendar time management , time tracking , etc.). So, hopefully, it should come as no surprise that I believe a person’s system that helps them be productive needs to evolve. As time passes, things change, and so must the productivity system! There are so many changes that could trigger a need to reflect and evolve: a change in service responsibilities, a change in a course, the arrival of a child, a change in how your kids need you, etc. [ Also posted on medium. ] So, this blog post is about how I deliberately and conscientiously evolve my productivity system. I’ll focus on what I generally do and provide some concrete case studies in hopes that they will help you think about your own situation. General Process My process has two main parts: a mindset and a monthly reflection . There are a few pieces to the mindset. First is just accepting that the productivity system has to c...

A common tactic for better managing your workload is tracking how you spend your time. But what does that even mean? Most of what I’ve read explains it in a few brief sentences, which I find dissatisfying. There are so many ways to track your time, after all! [ Also posted on medium. ] So, here is how I track my time. And I’ll frame this blog post as a case study to help you think about what would work for you. I do not recommend starting by doing what I do because my process is the evolution of 10+ years of tracking. Moreover, I’m a data geek who loves to play with data. A simple piece of paper where you jot down start and end times can be good enough. This blog post is more for those who want something a bit more technical, like a spreadsheet that you can use to do some math for you and more easily analyze the results. Why do I track my time? Knowing why you are tracking your time is valuable framing to help you decide how you will do it. I track my time for three reasons: accoun...